JENTZ SINGLE LARGEST DONOR IN CITY COUNCIL RACES

CHULA VISTA 
In the race for Chula Vista’s two City Council seats, the latest campaign disclosure forms show some candidates have a couple hundred backers making $100 donations, and others have a couple of powerful supporters able to drop thousands of dollars into a campaign via political action committees.

In the runoff for Seat 3, incumbent Pamela Bensoussan has raised more than $25,000 since Jan. 1, according to campaign documents filed with the city clerk late in July.

Challenger Larry Breitfelder, on the other hand, has declared less than $10,000 in direct contributions for the first half of the year, and an additional $8,000 in personal money he loaned to his campaign.

But he received a windfall in May just before the primary when the Committee for Chula Vista Public Safety paid more than $18,000 for mailers, phone calls and a newspaper advertisement, all in support of Breitfelder. The sole contributor to that committee in the last six months was local real estate developer and manager Earl Jentz, who donated $19,000 to the committee on the same day it made the advertising and mailer purchases. Jentz donated an additional $9,500 to the committee two weeks later.

Meanwhile, in the runoff for Seat 4, former Chula Vista Councilwoman and state Assemblywoman Mary Salas has raised more than three times the amount raised by her opponent.

Salas has received more than $35,000 in donations from a variety of community members since Jan. 1. The other contender, Linda Wagner, who serves as senior aide to sitting Councilman Steve Castaneda, raised a little more than $10,000 in campaign contributions during that same time period.

While the majority of Salas’ dollars are arriving from out of town, a higher percentage of Wagner’s money appears to be coming from Chula Vista residents. Of the first 161 contributions made to Salas’ campaign in the first half of the calendar year, 48 were made by Chula Vista residents. The remaining 113 came from people with addresses in Bonita, San Diego, La Jolla and even Springfield, Pa.

More than half of the 45 independent contributions Wagner received were from residents at Chula Vista addresses.

At least four of the people who contributed money to the Salas campaign also declared ownership or management responsibility of mobile-home parks in Chula Vista. The Chula Vista Mobile Home Park Owners Association also formed a political action committee and has donated at least $10,000 to the Democratic Party of San Diego County to support Salas, and $15,000 to support Bensoussan.

The city’s new mobile-home rent control fee has been a hot topic in recent months, and although Salas has not spoken publicly about the issue, Wagner has a history of involvement in mobile-home resident associations, whose interests sometimes come into conflict with the interests of park owners.

Both Salas and Bensoussan have also received financial backing from the Local 1931 American Federation of Teachers Guild committee, which spent $7,000 to mail out literature on behalf of the two candidates just before the primary.

The combined expenditures made by all four campaigns and the committees supporting them so far amount to about $126,000, most of it spent on consultants and campaign firms located outside the city.

Current council members say that changing the way City Council candidates are chosen from citywide elections to district elections would make the process less expensive for those who want to serve their community. They also predict district elections would ensure that the interests of local neighborhoods are represented in city government. A proposal to make that switch will be on ballots in November.